Found slash Lost
by nathan-p
Summary: Jeb loved three people. He lost two of them. It's only fair that the third found him. Jeb/Roland. RC-verse.


Her hair's pinned up loose tonight, dark strands falling against her neck.

He's happy to see her, as always -- circumstances have kept them apart for the past two months, and Jeb's happy to have even this moment with her.

"Happy Valentine's Day," she breathes into his ear, and he returns her kiss with less restraint and shyness than usual. She clings to him -- and suddenly he finds himself thinking of Roland instead of Val.

He already hardly remembers that night -- all he has left are scraps, sketches of memories that he's eager to erase. Because one of the thoughts he remembers is especially painful: thinking _I have a girlfriend_ and kissing Roland all the harder, holding onto him, needing him.

Val's hair comes loose from its pins entirely, and she runs a palm down his cheek, her eyes meeting his.

"What's wrong?" she asks, and for a moment he weighs the benefits of telling the truth.

But he can't bear to hurt her, not like that -- so he lies.

"Nothing," he says, and brushes her hair back from her face.

* * *

This, of course, comes back to bite him in the ass.

Val is fuming, on the edge of starting a really good shouting match.

He doesn't know why.

"You're right, Valentine," he says quietly, with a wobbly little smile forming on his lips. He clasps his hands together tightly and watches her throwing her things into a suitcase. She's really leaving. "You deserve someone better."

Holding his tongue, he does not add: _You deserve someone who wouldn't cheat on you with another man._

He digs his fingernails deeper into the soft palms of his hands. He'll never tell her -- it's just not in him to hurt her. And besides, it's far too late to tell her.

She looks at him without a smile.

"Jeb, it's not that I don't love you. It's not you."

"Don't pretend it isn't me," he says. "It is, and we both know it. Just go. You'll find someone better," he promises her.

She levels that deadly stare at him. "Damn right I will," she spits. "Someone who actually knows he's worth a damn, who even knows people care about him." She opens the door. "So goodbye."

It's the way she shuts the door that haunts him -- she doesn't slam it. She closes it quietly.

She's not angry, he comes to understand. Not with him. Something else is going on.

* * *

Connie doesn't know his last name until they've been dating for almost a month.

"Still doesn't ring a bell," she says, and shakes her head, smiling.

"Good," he tells her, and it actually isn't for quite a while that she finds out he's famous.

She's absolutely nothing like Val -- blonde where Val had dark hair, unambitious where Val was driven to succeed. The last science class she took was high-school chemistry, and she hated it.

And she doesn't mind the way Jeb is -- she doesn't care that he has a mental disorder. She reminds him to take his meds, writes his appointments on the calendar.

He never even got to tell Val.

So it's no surprise when he realizes he's fallen in love with her -- that Val is no longer first in his heart.

It surprises him a little that he doesn't think of Roland the first time they kiss; but after that, he doesn't remember Roland at all.

There's no space for him in Jeb's memories: there's only room for Connie now.

* * *

And then she's gone.

He comes back to himself while he's sitting in the lounge one morning. The past few weeks are a blur, and the coffee in his cup is cold.

He can't remember where Connie is.

He stops Harrison in the hall, asks her desperately if he's called Constance yet today.

She looks at him strangely, as if he's forgotten something, or said something unforgivable. (But he knows she should be used to this: more and more lately his memory's been slipping.)

"No, Jeb," she says gently. "Don't you remember?"

"No," he tells her, dreading her answer. "What am I forgetting?"

She won't meet his eyes, and so he knows it's something terrible.

"It's Connie," she says at last. "She passed away last week."

It's her careful word choice that gets him: he feels a flicker of sorrow, instead of the numb nothing he's grown so used to, and the way Harrison says she's gone makes him think -- he doesn't even have the memory of telling Connie goodbye.

Somehow he finds solace in his work; he surrounds himself with data, numbing what's already cold.

* * *

Roland hasn't even changed. There's no grey in his hair, and he's still as tall and thin as ever.

_How do I know that_? Jeb wonders. Because as far as he _remembers_, they've never met.

But Jeb still finds himself looking at Roland for a moment too long -- analyzing him with less stiff professionalism than usual. As if Jeb is seeing him through the lens of emotion -- as if he feels something towards Roland.

"Dr. ter Borcht!" he says, careful not to address him by his first name. "Great to see you."

Roland -- _ter Borcht,_ he reminds himself, _his name is ter Borcht_ -- just looks at him for a moment, and Jeb is afraid that he can somehow see the confusion in Jeb's heart. "Just Roland, please," he says.

"All right," Jeb says, but it isn't, because it only takes Roland three words to shake Jeb out of his cocoon of unfeeling, and Jeb can't deal with that, not now and not ever -- he's hardly known Roland for two minutes, and already he has far too much power over Jeb.

The worst part is -- Jeb isn't sure what he thinks of that.

* * *

Roland is different from both of them -- he's not Val's sharp ambition, nor Connie's soft devotion. He's a familiar smile, and stubble rasping against Jeb's cheek in the morning.

And he doesn't leave.

Everyone Jeb's loved has left him -- all of them have vanished from Jeb's life, without the luxury of tying up loose ends. No completion, just cut-off ends -- _now, it's complete, because it's ended here_, he thinks, finding a philosophy in someone else's words.

Roland never leaves.

There are moments of fear and doubt for the two of them: a rapidly dropping heart rate and bleeding Jeb can't stop the day Elsa is born; Jeb disappearing from sight in the courtyard at Lendeheim, and the sound of a world falling down around ter Borcht's ears.

And they shouldn't make it through. There's no logical reason for them to survive at all, much less to do so together.

But they do make it. The bleeding slows and eventually stops (and Jeb's heart almost stops itself when he realizes he's been given another chance to have a family). It takes ter Borcht months, but he and Jeb find each other at last.

It's in the forest, of all places, near where Val lives now. Where Ari is buried. If there's a place where Jeb could find himself again, it's here, maybe, where all that he was is buried six feet under.

Ter Borcht gets directions from Val, evidently, and so he knows the way to go.

Jeb hugs him tightly the moment he knows who's come to bring him home, and he thinks something that's, yeah, pretty stupid, but who cares:

_I never thought I could be saved,_ he thinks, _but you're the closest I've ever come._

Ter Borcht takes him by the hand and together they go home -- Jeb's finally found a happy ending, and this is it.


End file.
